Israel captures Palestinian home in E. Jerusalem

RAMALLAH: Israeli police and occupiers on Tuesday evacuated a Palestinian family from its home in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Jabal Al-Mukaber saying it was sold to Jewish occupiers.

Palestinian sources said Israeli force evacuated the Al-Qara’een family from its home in Al-Farouq area in Jabal Al-Mukaber.

The sources added that the three-story building is home to 22 members of the Al-Qara’een family.

The eviction began early in the day when police removed members of the Al-Qara’een family from their home in Jabal Al-Mukaber, an Arab neighborhood just south of Jerusalem’s Old City.

“There are about 100 police here and the whole area is completely closed off,” said Assaf Sharon, an activist with the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement, an Israeli-Palestinian group which fights to stop occupiers from taking over Arab homes in east Jerusalem.

He said the family had been locked in a legal battle over the property with the right-wing Elad movement, which pushes Jewish settlement in mainly Arab East Jerusalem.

“In effect, they are building a new settlement in east Jerusalem,” he said. “We saw people from Elad inside the house coordinating things. They seemed heavily involved.”

But a spokesman for Elad denied the group had acquired the house, saying it had been purchased by a Jerusalem-based lawyer acting on behalf of a US property group, Wohl Investment Co. The lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment. Mousa Al-Qara’een, a family member who was evacuated by the Israeli police, said that the sale was illegal as the name of the landlord written on the deal is no longer alive. He also claimed that the landlord left the house to the family in his will.

Elad acquired many properties belonging to Palestinians in Silwan and manages the national park in the “City of David” on behalf of Israeli government.

The Palestinians regard east Jerusalem as the capital of their promised state and fiercely oppose any attempts to extend Israeli control over the eastern sector.

Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed it in a move never recognized by the rest of the world. The Jewish state considers the whole of Jerusalem its “eternal and indivisible” capital.